Constructing Kasun, Educator

In my best efforts to connect with students, I am learning a lot more about cars than I ever planned to. 

 Why?

Because, as I try to get under the cognitive hoods of my students, I find that a couple of them are really driven by their interest in cars (puns intended).  So, in my efforts to make curriculum meaningful, with those students, we’ve been reading and writing about cars.

We don’t just read about the big-engine, tripped-out vehicles that they’re drawn to.  I try to intersect science, social justice, and the environment with their interest in cars.  One of my students is currently answering a letter about a dilemma… should the writer of the letter buy a car that will harm the environment, or are there other options? 

My students are learning about alternative fuel options and also weighing the impact of the Nano’s release at just $2500 in India will have on the environment, wrestling with questions about whether people in other countries should be able to use have the same access to cars that we do in the US.

One of the articles a Pakistani student and I read mentioned how the Nano is a nice alternative to motor scooters where whole families ride atop them at once.  “I’ve seen that, too,” he said calmly.  Huh.  Seems completely possible since his country is a neighbor to India, after all.

And my students are teaching me about the catalytic converter, horsepower, and we sometimes look at images of their favorite cars where I get full descriptions as to why those cars are so cool.  And I have to admit that those cars are fascinating to look at…  and I marvel at how much these students know about these machines.

If only there were more good car-oriented books for students.  Any ideas? 

I had what is probably my last session with the student I mentioned in my last post.  It was snowing very hard in the part of the county where I would meet him, and I almost thought about asking if it would be ok to come another day, but I trudged through the quickly falling snow to meet him.

My plan was for us to pick his best piece of writing from the exercises we had done together.  I explained that I’ll try to submit it to a book that is published by the Northern Virginia Writing Project (of which I am a member).  Entrance into the annual publication is competitive, so that was all the more incentive for us to polish the piece.

So he looked through his black and white notebook, saying things like, “Oh, I really like this one!” and, “This one is powerful, too!”  We looked for the strengths of the pieces, and then he asked, “Can’t I submit two?”  And, actually, he could, so then we went looking for two.

We selected one poem and one narrative.  I volunteered to type them for him (they were in longhand), and he agreed.  He said he would work on the narrative piece, and I watched the snow fall.  Thick flakes coated the trees on the hillside, framed by the large dining room window from where we worked.  It was hard not to grow contemplative as both the snow fell and I recognized this was our last class together.

Then he made a suggestion.  “What if you type while I tell you what to write, and then I can add some stuff as you’re typing?”  My initial reaction was that of the teacher-to-student thinking of, “Hey, do your own work!”  But then as I was realizing this was in fact a good suggestion, he seemed to sense my discomfort and said, “I mean, I’ll tell you slowly, and we can work on it together.”  And, this seemed like a great suggestion.  I’ve helped other people write before, and this seemed like a good request from him, recognizing how I could help him in the act of writing.

He had written a very intense piece, and he wanted to insert a few extra details to make the general statements more true.  This was his observation of what it needed.  I handed over the laptop, and he typed a few details beneath the narrative.  Then he thought through the best ways to insert them.

The work was complete.  It was stronger than it had been when we started it from his journal, and it was past time for me to leave.  The roads were going to be treacherous at this point (four or five inches of snow had piled up in about two hours).  But, from inside, it was all still beautiful.  The world had grown still, safe, calm–a reflection of the writing we had come to do, together.

I thanked my student for teaching me… explaining that I had learned a lot from him.  I also said it was possible that his placement might be at one of my sites, so maybe we didn’t have to say goodbye.  Then I took him back to his classroom and slipped out the door, into the quiet world of snow.

Sometimes we miss each other completely.  Sometimes what I value has nothing to do with what the other values.  And we end up speaking at each other, unpenetrated by the meaning.

That’s what’s happening in a book about a very young Hmong girl born to immigrants in California, http://www.spiritcatchesyou.com/.  She has epilepsy and seizes a lot.  The Hmong usually value this in their culture; she is both cursed with the suffering and but also blessed to become one who sees in spiritual realms which most people never will.  For her western medical doctors in California, she has a disease which must be cured.  For Western eyes, the Hmong perspective may seem “primitive,” but as I read the story, I am drawn into seeing the perspective behind Hmong eyes, where doctors make a baby cry, where the baby’s condition seems to get worse with medicine.  Meantime, the doctors are frustrated that the parents do not follow the treatment regimen as they prescribe, and both sides are frustrated–missing each other in their meanings and intentions.

There’s a connection here with an immigrant student who I won’t be seeing much longer.  His time at one of his sites is almost up, and, based on his progress, he will move to a location with less observation.  I’ve enjoyed every session I’ve worked with him.  I learn from him.  He’s brutally honest about a past he wants to leave in the past; he writes about it freely.  His writing isn’t exactly linear, it’s more like stream of consciousness, the details about abuse, people who have abused him, concrete metaphors spill out in a way that is usually hard to understand yet rich with meaning.

So he’s not a natural writer.  But his thoughts and feelings are intense, heavy.  Heavier than those of many adults I know.  I learn from him and the way he battles his demons every day.  I try to support him in that. 

Part of that support was pushing his case forward to receive special education services.  I find him so bright on many levels, but not the ones our education system has deemed are important–logic, math, reading and writing.  In fact, during one of our lessons, I administered a multiple intelligences survey to see where his strengths lay (see this link for a description of Howard Gardner’s development of multiple intelligences theory http://www.infed.org/thinkers/gardner.htm). 

Of eight intelligences Gardner has defined, my student scored highly on all but two–the only two that often count in US schools–verbal linguistic and logical/mathematical.  As such, I explained to him why I was submitting the paperwork for his testing.  What I couldn’t effectively explain was that he really is intelligent, just not the way schools value intelligence.

And what a shame.  My student is so introspective and good at expressing himself.  He’s creative, funny, good on the basketball court (we played once together for about fifteen minutes at his request and with the permission of his site).  He’s existential and loves music.  But these qualities don’t seem to count, and I wonder how he’ll do in this country.  Will his strenghts be missed over and over again, as they’ve been in the past, and might a sensitive soul go unnoticed, or, worse, get beat down by a culture that just doesn’t value his ways of being intelligent?